NBCU Plans $190 Million In NYC Upgrades

5/08/2012 4:06 PM Eastern

By: George Winslow

Following a groundbreaking ceremony in New York City today, NBCUniversal announced that it was making a major $190 million investment in its New York City operations that will include a series of upgrades and renovations at the company's 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters and other facilities in the city."We're delighted to announce that NBCUniversal is upping the ante in its decades-long relationship with New York," commented Patricia Fili-Krushel, executive vice president of NBCUniversal in a statement. "In addition to investing $190 million and contributing to making New York a greener city, we're building on an 85-year history that stretches back to the earliest days of broadcast entertainment."The projects will create about 484,000 man-hours of employment between now and the second quarter of 2014, when the rebuilds are scheduled to be completed, the company estimated.The upgrades include extensive renovations to 30 Rock, where the company has some 1.2 million square feet of space. In addition to renovations of its office space, the work will involve major upgrades to "the technical capabilities of its Manhattan facilities to best-in-class, state-of-the-art technology," the company reported.The investment will also include major work at 1221 Avenue of the Americas, where the company has leased 245,000 square feet. There, the upgrades include "building a new state-of-the-art studio control room, and updating critical components of the company's technical infrastructure, including replacing the Network's underlying broadcast origination technology, as well as implementing a new studio and production `fiber highway,'" the company announced.As part of the upgrades to its facilities, the company also plans to implement a number of energy saving technologies as part of its "Green Is Universal" initiative.